Thoughts and observations about Modesto and Stanislaus County

Comment at City Council Meeting 3/25/2014

By EOM Contributor

Good evening….tonight I’d like to talk about short-sightedness. According to the dictionary if someone is short-sighted about something, or if their ideas are short-sighted, they do not make proper or careful judgments about the future.

A good example of this is the one child policy in China, started in the 1980s. Chinese culture places a higher value on males than females, so this policy resulted in a much higher rate of female fetuses being aborted than males. The results is that there is now a generation of young Chinese men who are ready to marry. Unfortunately, there aren’t near enough young Chinese women for them to marry. This is the result of short-sightedness. It is the legacy of the one child policy.

I understand you want to bring more jobs to Modesto. We need them now and as our population continues to grow, we will need them in the future. But the flip side to that is that as our population continues to grow, we will need more food. The prime farmland in Wood Colony can help provide that food with its wide variety of very productive crops, unlike the farmland in other areas around Modesto, that can only produce 2 or 3 different types of crops and are not near as productive. The short-sightedness of your plan won’t be felt by my generation, but it will be felt by future generations. This will be your legacy.

I don’t mean to be offensive with what I’m going to say next, but let’s talk about date rape. We all know that rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power and control. And we all know that date rape involves people who are friends or at the very, least acquainted with each other. You are attempting to exert your power and control over our friends and neighbors. They have repeatedly said “no” and yet you continue to force yourselves on them. What you are doing to our friends, neighbors and acquaintances in Salida and Wood Colony is nothing less than political date rape. This will also be your legacy.

I would like to urge the residents of Salida and Wood Colony to continue saying “no” to your attempts to exert your power and control over them. As Gerald O’Hara said in Gone With The Wind….”land, it’s the only thing worth fighting for, worth dying for…for it’s the only thing that lasts”. However, if you are successful in your attempts to pave over this wonderful farmland, it will not last. It will be destroyed forever. And that will be the final piece of your legacy.